tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post4063246562531849691..comments2024-03-19T11:28:58.168-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Tearing ourselves apartDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-37024247141080858262016-08-30T11:12:20.306-04:002016-08-30T11:12:20.306-04:00Professor
Sorry to post here again. I thought your...Professor<br />Sorry to post here again. I thought your readers of this post deserved something bewildering to ponder: We think of race relations here now as at some kind of nadir, since 1960s.<br /><br />The far right, though, can easily, now, with global civilizational religious fundamentalist conflicts heating up, and do to all American people of color what they have already tried to do with President Obama, paint them all as Muslims under the skin, analogously to what had been done to Jews, turn a racial characteristic into a religious marker or moniker, even though most all American blacks have been converted to Christianity for hundreds of years.<br /><br />It is not a stretch, and would not at all surprise me.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-56001911482724592562016-08-27T02:31:04.554-04:002016-08-27T02:31:04.554-04:00Good article, great comments. We often talk of tip...Good article, great comments. We often talk of tipping points and individuals making a diference. I was too young to remember but I read an article about Nelson Rockefeller. One fine day ca. 1970, as drug addicts peacefully lined the NYC streets during one of the long hot summers he decided to go Rudi Giuliani on them. His imprisonment response to hippie liberal drug addiction of boomers was universally emulated, creating the situation we see now. Crime was not necessarily drug problem. I read an amazing article showing that lead in blood due to lead in gasoline caused lots of crime, violence and that crimeper capita in every community, black,, white has statistically reduced as lead has reduced(I believe it stays with those who absorbed it so people have to age to reduce crime and next generation comes on line). <br /><br />Next tipping point. Ronald Reagan, summer 1981, air traffic control. Absolutist response taken as green light by private sector to destroy unions through all means, foul and fair. Done job. Rockefeller and Reagan almost same age great generation. Draw own conclusions. <br /><br />2nd comment insightful. Global overproduction similar to 1875-1890, 1930s recessions. Need for income, meaningful employment, decoupled from population growth which industrial capacity, food production has allowed to come into being. This must channel into dissatified young men looking for trouble in crime, civil war, insurgencies. Classic crisis war scenarion from strauss and howe. Couple that phenomenon with the search for profits by the wealthy in low interest environment and we are ready for a war. Lots of young men bored plus endless capital laying around to make weapons. The spark is a renewed severe recession, right around the corner.<br /><br />And last comment is certainly right. European attempts to go American in terms of melting pot are unsuccessful.London has 57% non british native population. In 15 years cockneys will be extinct. Judge Nigel Farage as you will but the fall of the empire meant an open door policy to former colonies as a price to maintain influence. If such a trend were to continue against burgeoning 3rd world population white british will eventually go extinct in toto, Merkel's invitation to the global poor notwithstanding. If Brexit is a signal, Merkel's invitation was a trigger point in history bringing down unified Europe. Only Germany was so brainwashed post WWII to accept anything imposed on them due to guilt. Everyone else has common sense and identity. I read as France will after presidential election effectively exit EU like Poland, Hungary, ignoring austerity rules from Berlin, World Bank system. The control over EU via franco-german alliance and UK is basis of NATO, USA economic dominance transatlantic. US power is falling apart from orkneys to incirlik. This is also typical crisis scenario, everyone goes own direction. Result is European dissent if not war, no useful ally for America vis-a-vis Russia, China. Putin just has to bide his time to get peace on Western front. Neocons want war, profit growth for wall street only through expansion, siberian resource grab. Peace is no option. Such an attitude does not help working classes. Jobs might come to masses by import restrictions, low automation factories, freeze on innovations. IOW opposite of progress. We are superfluous. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Energyflowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14476915209268786507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-24254323083896818072016-08-26T16:09:30.265-04:002016-08-26T16:09:30.265-04:00Professor:
Great post. Sums it up.
I want to tal...Professor:<br /><br />Great post. Sums it up.<br /><br />I want to talk about some issues you discuss, which have set domestic politics on fire, in a somewhat wider context, for a moment.<br /><br />The idea of genuine national unity here was never, in my view, a powerful American ideal. <br /><br />Americans had ideals, strong ones indeed, such as loose federalism, global brotherhood of all rebellious libertarians regardless of race or religion, favored weak anti aristocratic and anti monarchist governments everywhere, democratic government by all the people, separation of church and state, and much else. <br /><br />Other aspects of the current crisis, domestically, have to do with the breakdown in a liberal international order based on Western and Americanist, civilization-neutral religion-neutral and race-neutral, economic and political ideals, which other civilizations, states, and empires have never shared, and which were even foreign to the West itself until the 18th Century.<br /><br />One could call the global crisis the backlash of Western liberal Enlightenment colonialism. It has a deeply racialist flavor, as well as an economic religious and political one.<br /><br />Who are the big success stories in the global economy lately? <br /><br />They are the Japanese, then the Chinese and other Asian societies the Tigers etc., who are rather racially and culturally segregationist in their ideology and politics, both against each other, and against all others.<br /><br />The Muslims are also in their way a big success story, especially those who had oil, and mostly share the kind of racial, political, and religious intolerance seen elsewhere.<br /><br />Trump can rub these successes in Americans' noses because they are an enormous, quite obvious, fact.<br /><br />Having Mexicans streaming over the border in millions has not made the long hopelessly uphill task of national unification here easier, going forward, but rather impossible forever.<br /><br />You characterize corporate America as the big winner domestically. There used to be such a thing as corporate America, but the globalization that has gone on for so long now has transformed American corporations into mostly global ones, with much of their asset bases and markets strewn across the globe.<br /><br />All the best<br /><br />Bozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-40806416509592010672016-08-26T14:26:21.649-04:002016-08-26T14:26:21.649-04:00I don't think basing your argument, with which...I don't think basing your argument, with which I agree, on raw numbers of those incarcerated is on firm ground. If the total number of whites and blacks in prison is roughly equal, that doesn't mean that blacks do not have a gripe. When the black population is about 13% of Americans but constitute 41% of the prison population there are reasons beyond just economics that must be addressed in the interests of equity and fairness. <br /><br />If I understand, your argument is that there is too much emphasis on identity politics and so the larger issues of income disparity and poverty become opaque. This is only going to get worse for every worker regardless of race or gender. If the world continues globalization, low paying jobs will continue to migrate to developing countries, and if the world de-globalizes it will be because technology replaces repetitive work, which is where the less educated make a living. <br /><br />The US is at a point where the future "fields of endeavor" may not support a full level of employment, or even enough income for a robust middle class, the golden goose of American prosperity. There are those who are thinking about this, and what they are proposing are ways to avoid massive civil unrest, not only in the US but in developed and developing countries, as well. As you have eloquently stated in your writings, the US is hamstrung in dealing with the broader issues by the polarized paralysis of our national government. Let us hope that our political class extracts their heads from rectal defilade and deals with the real issues of our time. You have been looking for a unifying cause, but let's hope that US citizenry does not find it in the same or similar way that the Russians did in 1917 or the Germans in 1933.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11629116622092214120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-29102692811995192262016-08-26T14:14:41.529-04:002016-08-26T14:14:41.529-04:00Thank you for doing this.
A pundit I highly admir...Thank you for doing this.<br /><br />A pundit I highly admire, Michael Lind, has been saying this (i.e., your conclusion) for decades. It started with his book, The Next American Nation, (1995). Interestingly, he started his career in the 1980's as a protege of William F. Buckley Jr., arguably THE protege of WFB jr, as I think he was being groomed to take over TNR. But in the early 90's he had an epiphany and described his conversion as one to "liberal nationalism". Your analysis here would fit perfectly within a liberal nationalist framework (as described by Lind). <br /><br />Unfortunately Lind wrote a scathing book review of The Fourth Turning in 1997, but seems to have come around to some of its ideas since even if not explicitly so.<br /><br />-Sean Love (member of Dr. Kaiser's aforementioned Facebook page)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07171143468543556600noreply@blogger.com